The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction MEGAPACK® (38 page)

He remembered arguing Yeats versus Synge bitterly with a verse playwright named Buxton; he remembered swilling barley wine with a blubbery Celtic bard from Glasgow—or was it Dublin? And he remembered kissing someone under a table; Marian Hawkes, maybe, or else that girl Joanne. Well, it didn’t matter which one, or why. Come the end of the week, nothing much of his past life would matter at all.

He picked up a book, neat and bright in its jacket. A poetry anthology, thick and costly; he’d coveted it a long while, and now it was his—just for putting his name on a paper that promised away his next eight years. Someone had spilled a little champagne on the book, too. That was too bad, but in a way he liked the idea of having some tangible souvenir of last night’s celebration.

The phone rang. He snatched it off the hook before it had rung twice, and said, “Bradmire here.”

“David, this is Sir Adrian Laurence. Of the Survey Commission, you know.”

“I haven’t forgotten, sir.”

“Good. I trust you’ve been enjoying yourself since yesterday morning?”

“Very much so,” Bradmire said, grinning. “It’s a long time since I’ve had fifty quid all in one lump.”

“Poverty’s a thing of the past as far as you’re concerned, son. But I wanted to remind you: you have an appointment with us tomorrow at noon. To select your companion, you remember.”

“I haven’t forgotten
that
either,” Bradmire said. “Do I report at your office?”

“That won’t be necessary. Room 707’s the place to go. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

* * **

It
had
been Marian Hawkes he had kissed, and not the other girl, after all.

He found that out that evening, when the group assembled in a pub near Clerkenwell Road and Hatton Garden, and then wandered westward toward the Bloomsbury flat of publisher’s assistant Kenneth Prior. By that time there were seven or eight in the group, and Bradmire—who was happily down to two guineas by this time—found himself walking along Theobalds Road with Marian.

“Do you still think Yeats’ plays were all that good?” she asked. “Or was it just the barley wine that got you so enthusiastic?”

“What’s that? Oh—yes.” He chuckled wryly. “I guess I
did
get a little too passionate and lose some of my critical objectivity. But I hardly remember most of the things I did last night.”

There was a sly tone in her voice as she said, “I wonder just how much of last night you’ve forgotten.”

He smiled. They turned up into Great Russell Street, and he started walking a little faster so they could catch up with the rest of the group. He found himself liking this soft-spoken girl, and he knew that was dangerous; in four days he’d be departing, and this was no time to start any emotional relationships. Especially not after having ignored the girl for the year he had known her.

But somehow he found himself hoping that his synthetic android would be rather like Marian Hawkes—tall, willowy, well built, with a soft deep voice and a sly sense of humor. He wouldn’t mind spending eight years in a two-man spaceship with someone like that.

In fact, he found himself kissing her again that night. Some time after that, he argued Yeats versus Synge again, and landed a sound punch in Buxton’s well-padded belly when words grew too hot. Sometime after that he had wandered across the city, not alone, into Victoria Embankment, and tossed a guinea piece into the Thames under the shadow of Scotland Yard. After that, he recalled crossing Waterloo Bridge and wandering round the slums of Southwark, and then doubling back over Westminster Bridge, watching the sun rise while walking by the Serpentine, and getting home to his flat just before 0700.

He slept three hours, waking at ten, and dressed and breakfasted. He surveyed his holdings and found that last night left him with the sum of seven and ninepence. Well, no matter, he thought; Sir Adrian had said he could have more expense money if he ran through the first fifty pounds.

He took the underground tube at Lancaster Gate, and got off at Tottenham Court Road. Precisely at noon, red eyed and weary but keenly anticipating what was to come, he presented himself at Room 707 in the Survey Commission building.

It looked like a very ordinary office. There was an attractive receptionist back of the desk, and a framed solido of King Henry on the wall. Sir Adrian was waiting for him, along with a smiling little man with disconcerting green eyes and a white smock.

Sir Adrian introduced him as Dr. Hammersmith, the Commission’s Chief of Testing. Hammersmith stared at him with coolly-appraising eyes, as if giving him an on-the-spot psych-testing. Then he said, in clipped Scots tones, “Very good. Will you come this way please, Mr. Bradmire?”

He was led on into an inner office that was dark; Hammersmith nudged a stud and subtle electroluminescents fluttered into life, revealing a truly startling quantity of ponderous apparatus. It seemed to Bradmire that one entire wall of the big office was devoted to a monstrous pile of frightening gearwork: massive tubes and coils and strangely-throbbing lights, dials and meters, electromagnets and unidentifiable mechanisms.

“Is that thing—for me?” he asked in a hushed voice.

Hammersmith smiled. “It does look a little imposing, doesn’t it? Yes, that’s our psych-tester.”

He gestured toward a desk in the back of the office and said, “Would you sit there, please?”

Bradmire did so—and noticed that it was no desk, but rather an additional machine covered with dials and indicators. He lowered himself with some trepidation into the chair riveted to the floor in front of it, observing that a formidable array of devices seemed to be installed right behind him.

He grinned feebly. “What’s going to happen?”

Sir Adrian said, “We’re going to let you choose a mate. The Singestault Selector makes our job a good deal easier and quicker.”

“What do you mean? How do you go about designing androids?”

Hammersmith said, “We keep fifty or sixty basic androids on hand in the building at all times. We’re going to march them through this office while you analyze them with the Selector, and we’ll pick out the one who most approximates your ideal. Usually it’s possible to find one that has an index of correlation of, say, 77%. We earmark her for you and send the others back to storage. Then, by using the data the Selector has received from you, we make psychical and physical alterations in her until her Selector score is 99.999%. Then she’s yours—the woman you wanted.”

Bradmire felt strangely unnerved by Hammersmith’s bland confidence. “Suppose,” he said in a hoarse voice, “suppose there isn’t any android in stock who correlates better than fifty percent. What then?”

Hammersmith shrugged, “Then we design one from scratch for you. But this takes much longer; it’s far easier to begin with a standard model and custom-shape her. Sometimes we come quite close.”

“A boy in here last week,” Sir Adrian said, “found an android who was within 95% of his ideal. All we had to do was add an inch of bosom and give her a tape on famous cricket stars and she was perfect for him. Of course, it’s rarely that simple. Shall we begin?”

“I—I guess so,” Bradmire said. His fingertips felt cold; he felt irrationally tense. “We might as well get started.”

Hammersmith lowered a sort of crown over his head—a recording instrument, some kind of electroencephalograph. There were other detectors attached to his wrists and ankles. He felt as if he were being prepared for execution, not for finding a perfect mate.

“Keep your hands on these buttons,” Hammersmith said. “They’ll register changes in skin temperature. We’ll also be picking up pulse alterations, adrenalin counts, and eighty or ninety other things. It’s foolproof.”

He stepped back and threw a master lever. Bradmire heard a humming sound as all the complex machinery around him came to life. The needle on the Singestault Selector’s main gauge fluttered momentarily and dropped back to zero.

In front of him and overhead a battery of lights flashed on, creating a hazy sort of field—with a woman’s silhouette in the middle of the field. Quite a handsome silhouette too, Bradmire thought.

A door opened. A girl stepped out and began to walk with measured steps toward the silhouette.

She was tall and dark of complexion, and she wore a skin-tight two-piece outfit that hid absolutely nothing of her long, curved legs and high bosom. Her hair was cropped short; her nose was a bit too long, and there was something faintly haughty about her eyes. She looked human, all too human, and Bradmire would not have objected to having her.

She passed through the silhouette. She was a bit too tall and a trifle too narrow in the hips. Bradmire glanced at the detector. It was registering only 58%. A long way from his ideal, evidently.

But the Commission had plenty of other girls, it seemed. Narrow-hips passed on through the field and out of the room, and already another was advancing—short, buxom, with a liquidly undulating way of walking. Bradmire had never cared much for short girls. This one rang up 32% on the gauge, and passed on.

There was a wide and varied assortment. Short ones, tall ones, blondes, brunettes, some with hair of no color he had ever seen. Some who came through the field brazenly nude, others prudishly concealed. Haughty ones, shy ones, farmgirl-type ones. Girls in evening gowns and girls in spacesuits and girls in nothing at all.

Dozens of them must have gone by. Sweat dribbled down Bradmire’s face, and the apparatus strapped to him felt oppressively heavy. He had lost all count and had no idea which had scored what. An icy, regal-looking one had tallied the low score, 11%, and a slim long-haired brunette in tight rubberoid halter and tights had recorded 69%, the high so far. Bradmire wondered how long it would go on, and whether he would find anyone who outscored the 69-percenter. As far as he was concerned, the brunette would do, in a pinch.

A new girl was coming out; they moved in endless series. This one was a tall blonde, clad in rubberoid from neck to ankles—revealing thereby both a sense of modesty and a startlingly good figure. Her eyes were wide and clear, her smile elfin.

Bradmire felt an inward tingle. He looked down at the Selector. The needle was oscillating wildly and coming to rest someplace above the 98% level.

He looked back at the platform, at the girl. She was standing in the Selector field, and the silhouette framed her almost perfectly.

And something else was quite surprising. She was a perfect double for Marian Hawkes.

“Hold everything,” Bradmire said loudly. “This looks like the one. The Selector says she’s almost perfect—and I agree!”

The lights went on suddenly. Bradmire blinked and looked around. Sir Adrian and Hammersmith were paying no attention to him; a white-smocked technician had burst into the office.

He was shouting, “Dr. Hammersmith, there’s been a mistake! A human girl got in the android lineup by mistake! We were checking the potentials, and one of the last ones nearly blew out our board!”

So that explains it, Bradmire thought. It isn’t Marian’s double at all. It’s Marian. But how—and what—and why…?

Confusion seemed to be ruling in the testing laboratory. The android girls had all re-entered, and were milling about in alarm. Hammersmith was swearing. Above everything else, Bradmire heard Sir Adrian’s commanding voice: “How could something like that happen?”

The hapless technician shrugged. “She just slipped through, that’s all. But it’s easy enough to find out who it is. We just look for the one who has a navel, and that’s our girl.”

“Very well,” Sir Adrian thundered. “Bradmire, I’m sorry about all this. We’ll have to check.”

“But look here, sir—I hit better than 99% on that last girl. She’s obviously the one I want.”

“Hmm.” Sir Adrian and Hammersmith examined the selector gauge. “Most unusual, eh? Which girl was the one who got this score, Bradmire?”

“That one, sir.”

He pointed to Marian, who stood gravely in the midst of the android girls, trying her best to look like one of them.

Hammersmith removed the paraphernalia that bound Bradmire, and he crossed the room to her.

“All right, the rest of you!” Sir Adrian snapped. “Let’s see your stomachs. And there’s trouble waiting for the one who isn’t a laboratory product!”

At Marian’s side, Bradmire whispered, “How the deuce did you get into that lineup?”

She smiled. “Last night you gave me ten guineas for a bottle of champagne. I put it to a better use and bribed one of the technicians to let me in.”

“But how did you know the machine would pick you?”

“It didn’t take a machine, silly. Everyone knew it but you, all along. This was my last chance, wasn’t it?”

Bradmire grinned at her and turned around. The android girls had formed into a line again, only now fifty bare and navelless feminine stomachs were revealed. It was a somewhat dazzling sight.

“Odd,” Sir Adrian said. “They all seem to be synthetics, all right. But the detector-board said—ah. There’s one other.” He looked at Marian. “Kindly unzip, young lady.”

Bradmire stepped forward and said, “I don’t think that will be necessary, Sir Adrian.”

“What?”

“She may or may not be an android; I’m not sure myself; But the Selector plainly says she’s the woman I wanted. I don’t think we need to continue this session any further.”

“But if there’s been a violation…”

“Does it matter, if she’s human?” Bradmire said. “The thing that counts is the compatibility index. And that’s pretty close to perfect.”

And I should have seen that a long time ago, he thought.

Sir Adrian looked puzzled; but then, he began to laugh. “I begin to understand. Very well; the Selector tells the truth—and we’ll overlook any irregularities in the procedure. Dr. Hammersmith, the session’s over. And if you two will follow me to my office, we’ll assign you to Indoctrination for Survey work.”

As they left, Bradmire whispered to the girl, “You are Marian Hawkes, aren’t you? Not just a clever android imitation? I mean…”

She giggled deliciously. “The only way to find that out is to look for my navel, isn’t it?”

He reached for her belt. She slapped his wrist gently. “Not here, silly. Later. We’ll have plenty of time for things like that on the way to Betelgeuse.”